5 Things Women Need To Know about Trump’s first 100 days

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WWR Article Summary (tl;dr)Shilpa Phadke, the director of the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress, says that the first 100 days of the Trump administration have been devastating for women’s equality.

Detroit Free Press

On the same day the U.S. dropped what’s being called the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan, President Donald Trump quietly signed a law Thursday that gives states the authority to halt federal funding of family planning services to Planned Parenthood and other clinics that provide abortions.

As bombs explode, laws are changed and diplomacy evaporates around the world, it’s difficult to keep up with the pace at which the Trump administration’s policies are rolled out. Yet advocates for women’s rights say now is the time to be vigilant.

Shilpa Phadke, the director of the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress, said the first 100 days of the Trump administration have been devastating for women’s equality.

“It’s just a reminder that after repeated promises that President Trump would protect women and invest in women’s health, those words have really nothing behind them,” said Phadke.

“He’s denying women access to family-planning services and lifesaving health care, and we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s been blow after blow, really.”

Kelly Dittmar, an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden and scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics, said that though some of the news has been shocking to many women, Trump’s actions haven’t been surprising to political scientists who watched the campaign.

“Hillary Clinton said this throughout her campaign: ‘When somebody shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” Dittmar said. “It’s a continuance of a pattern of behavior of not prioritizing these issues and, in fact, promoting a brand of leadership and campaigning that was all about masculinity … and going so far as to promote a toxic masculinity that is deriding women.”